What's This Class About?

The highest archetype of the clown—the Fool, Joker, or Trickster—offers the ability to engage authentically with every emotion and state of being. The Fool commands mastery over his or her emotions, navigating them with ease and confidence, yet unafraid to confront them directly. For the Fool, emotions such as sadness or seriousness are temporary and natural states. The word "emotion" itself suggests movement, a transition from one feeling to the next.

When we engage in improvisational scenes or theater games using gibberish, many of us may feel panic and the urge to flee from the discomfort it stirs. Others may respond with uncontrollable laughter as a way to avoid facing embarrassment. Often, in our desire to clown and play, we strive to escape seriousness and fail to give it the full space it deserves.

Meeting, playing with, and befriending our seriousness—voluntarily—is the key to allowing it to dissolve, find its rightful place, and transform. Approaching seriousness through exaggeration, inflation, and a mix of gibberish fosters authenticity and grants the courage of the clown (and each of us) to make peace with this 'serious shadow.'

When gibberish is treated as a real language, with constantly shifting words, and the actor embraces the "fire" of discomfort without extinguishing it or fleeing, they elevate their status to that of the Fool or Trickster. In this state, they can playfully deceive others, who will never realize that the dialogue is mere gibberish. The Fool commands the scene, remains unshakable, and runs the show.

In this workshop, we will explore various theater improv scenes using gibberish and nonsense to encounter, befriend, and play with shadows like seriousness, deadly seriousness, and arrogance. If time permits, we will also delve into hyper-judgmental attitudes, the need to bully, revenge, and execution.